Ferrari Challenge Interview: Mark Cale tells us why his game wipes the floor with Forza 2

Mark Cale is a man on a mission. A lifelong lover of Ferrari's cars, he's bringing the experience of driving Italy's finest to gamers around the world with Ferrari Challenge. The game, developed by Eutechnyx and Cale's company System 3, certainly should be a Ferrari fan's wet dream, with 50 cars from Ferrari past and present lovingly recreated in-game, complete with handling that's been tweaked by Bruno Senna, Ayrton Senna's nephew. It's designed to straddle the arcade-sim divide, so players can choose to test their mettle with all assists turned off, or go a more arcadey route and barrel around the courses with less to worry about. Accompanying this is an in-game economy that sees greater rewards given to players who choose to play without assists, thus allowing them to purchase unlocked cars faster, as well as giving arcade-inclined players more of an incentive to reduce the assists they use.

With the game almost done and gunning its engines on the starting grid, IGN got in touch with Mark for a chat about the game, and discovered he's not shy about singing the game's praises, nor of critiquing perceived failings in other racing games. Read on to find out what he had to say.

"And I think that's the biggest difference, because with Forza 2, unless you were absolutely on the right line that they'd set out, you could never get anywhere. Also, it was far too twitchy in terms of the handling. The handling on Forza 2 – I think – was appalling."